Bangkok Dangerous
Nicholas Cage truly is a wonder. A man that is capable of such amazing performances as Ben Sanderson (Leaving Las Vegas) and Charlie Kaufman (Adaptation) who also feels an unenviable and bewildering need to flex his entirely non-cerebral side in the likes of Next and Ghost Rider.
These less than worthy attempts to undermine his own credibility seem to be paying off and we are presented here with yet another forgettable, regrettable actioner that we could all well do without.
In essence, Cage takes on the none too complex character of Joe. Joe is an assassin bordering on the fringes of retirement. Hinting through narration early on that he is nearing the time when he can finally stop working, he only needs to complete four more jobs all centred on the city of Bangkok. Then he can retire, leaving the sordid dirty business that has made him rich once and for all.
And perhaps nearing the end of Joe’s career, where solitude and sobriety are pre-requisites to survival, he feels that he is now able to let loose and enjoy life a little more. So much so, that even before he has got more than half way through his killing quota in Bangkok, he has already made a new best friend in the form of student gofer and assassin-in-waiting, Kong (Shahkrit Yamnarm). He even goes so far as to fall in love with the local pharmacist, a young mute Thai woman, whose name means ‘rain’, apparently. Cue a simpering, doe-eyed Cage at one point and a practically monosyllabic Neanderthal the next. (I’ll let you work out which is which)
The love scenes in question are regularly soaked in golden oriental hues and accompanied by a soft and airy piano in the soundtrack which hints more at Thomas Newman or Hanz Zimmer in inspiration, more than it does embrace the scenes. Littered with plot devices left unattended and questions unanswered, not least the one about a deaf woman who can’t hear a gun being fired ten feet away but can still manage to dance in time to music she cannot apparently hear, the film labours from one presumably ill conceived decision to the next.
Regularly hampered by Cage’s own narration which grinds after only a couple of minutes, due to its nauseating predictability, the film fails to even come up to scratch with the ideas it has cleared pinched from elsewhere. For the no-brainer, even the action sequences are uneventful and pedestrian in their thrills. All in all, there is not much for anyone to get their teeth into.
Set in the present day, we have been dragged kicking and screaming back to another time. A time where Danny Glover and Mel Gibson rule the world. A time where all you required for this type of thing was a dastardly fiend (always foreign, and usually oriental) with designs in doing no more harm than the odd bit of trafficking or distributing a couple of kilos of Colombian marching powder.
At least then we had the humour. This effort is completely devoid of anything remotely resembling a laugh, unless you count incredulous snorting at the bare faced cheek that the thing even managed to get past the bargain bin at the local petrol station in the first place.
Oxide Pang Chung and Danny Pang were both involved in the original 1999 version of this story and you do wonder what on earth possessed them to get involved with this one. Cage has clearly been furtively scanning HBO in the wee small hours and had a brief romance with a film that should never have seen the light of day. This Cage produced howler should have stayed firmly in his head where it belongs, save ruining the day for everyone else.
Cage can do better, that much we have all seen. I just wish he would.
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